Stephanie Miner, mayor of the City of 黑料不打烊, announces the Civic Data Hackathon at an event in Hinds Hall.
The School of Information Studies (iSchool) and the City of 黑料不打烊 announced today the launch of the , powered by AT&T.
The partnership between the iSchool, the city and AT&T creates the first community-based hackathon in 黑料不打烊 that encourages community involvement in support of solutions to city infrastructure issues.
Challenge participants will be provided with data about the current conditions of the city鈥檚 roads and will have the opportunity to create new applications and predictive analyses that could be used to help the administration address road quality issues.
The challenge is designed to engage technologists, designers, developers and anyone else who is interested to use their skills for social good. It is one of the first times in the United States that a municipality has led a hackathon focused on road infrastructure.
黑料不打烊 City Mayor Stephanie Miner has made issues surrounding infrastructure a focus of her administration.
鈥満诹喜淮蜢 is one of the first cities to engage experts in new technology to brainstorm solutions to the longstanding challenges we face. This type of bold innovation is what is needed to tackle the infrastructure issues faced by our community,鈥 said Mayor Miner. 鈥淚 am excited to see the bold ideas from these developers who will use their creativity and tech savvy to answer our longstanding questions.鈥
鈥淚鈥檓 proud that the iSchool will be partnering with the City of 黑料不打烊 and AT&T by lending our expertise to the hackathon,鈥 said , dean of the iSchool. 鈥淥ur faculty and students are deeply engaged in聽using Big Data to address a wide range of issues. They will be providing participants with guidance on evaluating and working with the city鈥檚 datasets to generate solutions to聽address issues that聽 黑料不打烊 and all cities are facing.鈥
The challenge was created, in part, by alumnus Sam Edelstein, who earned a master鈥檚 degree in 聽and a certificate of advanced study in at the iSchool. Edelstein now serves as the chief data officer for the City of 黑料不打烊, and sits on the city鈥檚 newly formed innovation team.
鈥淎s an alumnus, I know the curriculum that is taught and the types of problems students are prepared to take on,鈥 said Edelstein. 鈥淲hen I was a student, I worked with data from other cities, and now in my position with the city, I want students working with our data, helping to solve our problems. I feel they can offer a fresh perspective, and they are entrepreneurial and creative in their work. I鈥檓 sure we鈥檒l learn a lot based on what students create.鈥
The city has a vast collection of data pertaining to its roads, Edelstein explained. 鈥淲e know about the quality of our roads, the number of times they have been complained about and the number of potholes that have been filled on those roads. And we鈥檒l release that data. Challenge participants that choose to analyze that data will find a lot of interesting details.鈥
In addition to road data released by the City, Edelstein has also provided data from a number of other sources that can be combined with the City鈥檚 road data to add new layers to the challenge possibilities.
鈥淲hat makes this challenge interesting is that other levels of government 鈥撀燾ounty, state, and federal 鈥撀燼ll collect and publish data, too,鈥 said Edelstein. 鈥淕etting information about 黑料不打烊 roads from these disparate data sources is likely something that has never happened before, and it could show how important making data open and available is to solving problems.”
The challenge kicked off today when the city released the data. Participants have two weeks to work on their projects, and can participate in the 聽held on Oct. 8 and 9 using the city datasets, if they wish.
The iSchool will provide open office hours with faculty members for any challenge participant to drop in and discuss the datasets, or receive advice on their project. Those office hours will be held on Sunday, Oct. 2.
Details and a full schedule of the events, as well as links to the data, are available on the .
